Full Text of Illuminations by Joan Mitchell, CSJ

Jesus insists we cannot love God without loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Catholic social teaching understands the human person as sacred and social, sacred because we are made in God’s image and likeness and social because we thrive only through relationships. From infancy we thrive because someone feeds and bathes us, plays peek-a-boo until we recognize their faces. Teenagers discover who they are in making and keeping friends. Adults find abiding and affirming companionship in their marriages and friendships.

When Israel makes its covenant with God at Sinai, the people become the people of God by agreeing not only to claim and worship God alone but to honor their parents and honor and respect one another’s lives, marriages, property, and reputations. Jesus insists we cannot love God without loving our neighbors as ourselves.

The bishops of the Second Vatican Council remind us in their Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World that God wills “to make people holy and save them, not as individuals without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge God and serve God in holiness (#32). In this document the council calls Catholics into solidarity with all the people of Earth. Its first sentence is as important to memorize today as the opening Q/A of the Baltimore Catechism once was.

The joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these, too, are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.

Like all Church documents the title of this document comes from its first words; in Latin, Gaudium et Spes; in English, Joys and Hopes. In the decades before Gaudium et Spes, many Catholics lived an other-worldly spirituality, worrying about getting to heaven. After Gaudium et Spes (1965), Catholics developed a spirituality of solidarity with the poor. In fact we recognize the work of justice is constitutive of living the gospel and being church. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers wherever they live.

Solidarity is a principle of Catholic social teaching. The word derives from the Latin word sol, which mean whole. Solidarity assumes the human race is one human family, whatever our national, ethnic, racial, economic, or political differences. The work of solidarity is making sure that our neighbors have food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care. These are basic human rights.

In 2000, the United Nations established eight Millennium Development Goals. An unprecedented 189 nations signed on to make these goals the world’s agenda for the human family. Like Catholic social teaching, which holds the dignity of every person, the goals call us to be our brothers and sisters’ keepers and challenge us to prefer the needs of the poor to our own wants. The eight goals are:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Cut in half the number of people living on $1 a day.
• Achieve universal primary education.
• Promote gender equality and empower women.
• Reduce child mortality.
• Improve maternal health.
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
• Ensure environmental sustainability.
• Ensure global partnership for development.

Our charism as Sisters of St. Joseph challenges us to roll up our sleeves and ask, “What more can we do?” The world needs all our talents—educators, engineers, business investors, marketers, health providers.

The Millennium Development Goals helps us see how local and global issues interconnect. In Minneapolis at Learning in Style, Sisters of St. Joseph and Consociates huddle intently with hundreds of adult students from more than 70 countries that have come to learn English. In the same building at INSTEP, sisters and St. Joseph Workers care for the children of these immigrants while they study.

St. Joseph Workers are women between the ages of 21-35 who volunteer for a year in sisters’ ministries. Emily Maher decided to volunteer in order to “sort out what to believe and what to do with her life.” The children at INSTEP brought the world into Emily’s life. Her experience of volunteering led her to an internship with Carol Zinn, CSJ, at the United Nations, working with the Congregations of St. Joseph, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) that represents12,000 Sisters of St. Joseph in 51 countries.

Since 1999, the sisters’ NGO has had advisory status at the Economic and Security Council. “Poverty, health care, and environment are at the center of what we deal with now,” says Emily. “We have the honor of informing governments how we in the field see issues.”

The NGO is helping the Sisters of St. Joseph and Consociates develop a global consciousness. This growing global consciousness calls us to actualize the oneness of the human race and sustain Earth, our home. Faculty from the College of St. Catherine and other province-sponsored schools—Cretin-Derham Hall High School and the Academy of Holy Angels—are participating in the Religious Order Partnership Conferences at the United Nations and exploring ways to link local and global social justice issues.

At the College of St. Catherine, the Center of Excellence for Women and Public Policy convenes a conference on human trafficking. “Mail order brides” arrive in every major airport in our country, including our own. Young women and men from former Soviet republics and from East Asia countries accept jobs that turn out to be in sweatshops or shackle them in prostitution. The conference organizes to strengthen Minnesota law to help end trafficking and treat the young people as victims rather than criminals.

In August, 2005, the province leadership team heard Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, speak at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. She also spoke at a College of St. Catherine Leadership Luncheon. Ms. Robinson estimates that the Millennium Development Goals were achievable for a cost of $60-70 billion per year. She contrasts that figure with the $400 billion nations spend on military expenses each year.

The Millennium Development Goals call us to conscious solidarity with our global neighbors. War, disaster, and famine bring them to our doorsteps. Ours is the continuing work, locally and globally, of sharing their joys and cultures, responding to their grief, and assuring their rights.

Joan Mitchell, CSJ